Today, the fishing industry is experiencing a loss of older people skilled in the processing of fish for freezing or for sale as fresh fish. Younger workers lack the skill and interest in this area. While some machines have been invented to decapitate and eviscerate fish, they have been too complicated and a great need exists for a simple machine with fewer moving parts and requiring less skill to operate. The machine must, of course, be commensurate with the results achieved by the manual process of the old skilled worker. The machine must produce processed fish at a fast rate and provide safety against injury that frequently occurred in the manual process.
Machines that have been developed in the prior art are too expensive for the smaller processor and too slow (average of 60 fish per minute). They have too many parts and generally use nose guides to position the fish as they enter the machine. The use of nose guides limits the processor to a narrow range of fish and generally requires that he grade the fish into size groups before processing.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a machine which can be successfully operated by the unskilled person in positioning each fish for machine processing. Another object of this invention is to provide a rotating blade cutter for severing the backbone at a 0-30 degree angle to recover more of the edible portion of the fish. Still another object is to provide a guide rail to follow in the path of rotating blade and temporarily hold the body portion of fish, while a rotating impact device forces the head and neck down onto a slide and away from the body of the fish and simultaneously pulls the entrails out of the fish for removal. This machine results in a higher yield, a broader range of fish, and a faster production (150-160 fish per minute). Still other objects will become apparent from the more detailed description which follows.